Ghost
Inkling
@Ouroboros, I actually have to disagree with you...I've always felt the "ready-made" character with a self-evident past written all over his/her appearance and/or attitude to be kind of...(no offense intended)...cheap. Like "Where was I when this character was developed? Oh...they weren't." But then again I tend to king of over-develop my charaters somethimes if that's possible.
We operate differently, that's all. For me, the setting is almost a character on its own and it strongly influences people who live there, so my settings aren't as mutable as yours are. My plots are about people and things that frighten, astonish, or intrigue me, not about things that happen in my daily life. I don't disagree with the way you write. It just wouldn't work for me.
I think I can see where you're coming from with the idea that this type of character is cheap, but I'm not sure what you mean by a self-evident past. If it's the runes as a means of restraint for mental patients, well, that was on my mind before this character. I wasn't going to use a viewpoint character to tell that part of the story until she showed up. The package I referred to is conflict and setting, like a character running away from an insane asylum. I have to find out her past and future on my own, along what makes her her.
It's basically like a snapshot or stills from a few moments in someone's life. I have to create a story to explain what I saw. I can see fragments of myself in those characters, so I know they're truly mine.
I've never played Mass Effect.